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In this noir thriller set on the interstellar Quadrail, former government agent Frank Compton can't catch a break. After a successful mission against the Modhri, the coral polyp-based group mind that is attempting to take over the galaxy, Frank arrives at his New York apartment. A young woman is waiting for him, pointing a gun at his face. She tells him that someone on New Tigris is holding her ten-year-old sister. Compton takes her gun and orders her out, only to be rousted out of bed and accused of her brutal murder.

After Frank's ally Bruce McMicking posts his bail, Frank travels to New Tigris with his assistant, Bayta, and locates the sister, who is part of a key resistance group that is fighting the Modhri throughout the galaxy. Compton must get the girl to a hidden refuge planet via the Quadrail to ensure the continued efforts of the resistance. But can he do it before the Modhri gets to her first?

Compelling characters, hard-boiled sleuthing, and non-stop action make this a hard SF thriller that will grab the reader and not let go until the last page.

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Review

"Good thriller, full of red herrings, blind alleys, and rising tension."–Booklist on The Third Lynx

"An inventive plot…Zahn's strength is hard science fiction, and he excels at technical description. The comic-book-like nonstop action will attract fans of the genre."–Romantic Times BOOKReviews on Night Train to Rigel

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

There is some truth to the complaints from other reviewers that there is a lot of backstory thrown into this one. To some degree, this is necessary as the nature of the conflict between the Modhri and Compton's employers changes in this story.Harriet's review says nothing of the Modhri's fear/anger over what it calls "The abomination". That fear leads the Modhri to try to persuade Compton to help the Modhri get rid of the abomination. Of course, Compton is too cagey for that. The Modhri shows increasing cleverness in its use of "walkers" and some interesting new capabilities. It is also good at using the legal process to try to slow Compton down. Fortunately, he has Bayta, and McMicking to help. The latter is especially useful. It also appears that Compton is warming up to Bayta.

A lot of action happens here. It is clear though that this war needs several main actors. Compton inflicts damage, but it takes time to get to different places on the quadrail, giving the Modhri time to create new situations and countermeasures. McMicking helps significantly, but it's still too limited a force.

The first two books of this series were clearly film noir homages. Not only did they follow many of the noir conventions, but for good measure it was established that many of the main characters were fans of classic noir films.

But Odd Girl Out seems to have shifted gears a bit. It starts with another one of the noir tropes, where the pretty girl asks a detective for help, he turns her down, and then she gets murdered. So now he's on the case, needing to redeem his hardheartedness. Plus, she's murdered with his weapon, so that makes him the prime suspect.

But somewhere along the line, the background story of the Modhri and the Spiders starts taking over the tale. By the end of the book, much of the noir feeling is gone, or at least subsumed. Instead, we are set up to expect that the next book will be more of a straightforward battle. Noir is all about atmosphere and style and misdirection, but now it seems this may be replaced with something more direct. The detente between the Modhri and his foes (including Compton and Bayta) appears to be over.

In a sense, that's too bad. I was enjoying Zahn's flirtation with the noir conventions. But it couldn't have gone on forever, for the same reason noir films generally didn't have sequels. You can only carry a noir story just so far -- after that the suspension of disbelief snaps.

I felt that Odd Girl Out started to lose its way as the story progressed. Zahn started caring more about the greater war than about the little skirmish that Compton once more found himself fighting. And the book suffered a bit because of this. Neither fish nor foul, it ended up feeling more like a transition than anything else. Perhaps you could call it "middle of the trilogy" syndrome. It's not as fresh as the earlier books, but it still doesn't conclude anything.

I think I'd like to read more books about Compton and Bayta. The problem is, however, that I'm getting tired of the Modhri.

I found Odd Girl Out to be an attention getter and an attention retainer--typical of Timothy Zahn's novels. There is an excellent balance of character development and suspense and just plain adventure, even when this book is third in a series.

If I have a complaint, it's that the series wasn't concluded--it's exciting to anticipate another book, but now I'm left hanging!

While not Zahn's best work in my opinion, it's a great follow-up to the series that started out with such a bang. Zahn knows how to hook and entertain, and Odd Girl Out is no exception. I recommend this read to anyone with a fancy for fiction, sci-fi or not!

Gad ! What an awful book. I am a fan of Timothy Zahn, and I stuck with it, but after 80% into the book, I still did not give a damn about the characters or the outcome.I found myself flipping pages ahead, just to see if he would commit the ultimate sin of leaving you hanging, with the `answer' in the next book.To his credit he did not, but the whole story was so plastic (hero resuces resucee without knowing why, except that the bad guy wants her), plastic characters (the hero's `right hand girl' was so paper thin a character, take her out of the story entirely and in my opinion an improvement, the second character cohort, although more interesting, appears a number of times, showing up to help rescue the hero, and then after the scene is ended, disappers from the story (until the next time), plastic villians (one person, taking over the known universe via coral, yes coral, implanted in innocent aliens and humans, in order to take control of them as needed to control their actions, without their ever knowing), plastic universe (aliens including, spiders who run trains, yes trains, to different planets, the only way for interplaentary travel, horse headed aliens, and stinky, from what I gather `chickens'!), and a plastic boring ending (I will not give away the ending, but suffice to say the hero resuces the poor resucee so that the bad guy, may, or may not, find her again).It was like a short story outline, the hero is..., the cohorts are..., the rescuee is..., the bad guy is...., the universe is..., and the book was given to some student to write... badly.Sorry, I like Zahn, but the `universe' and premise, was beyond weird, I just could not get into it. The characters were thin plastic, and read like a big awful chase scene.BryanM

More About the Author

Timothy Zahn is the Hugo Award-winning author of more than a dozen original science fiction novels and the bestselling Star Wars trilogy Heir to the Empire, among other works. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.